Memoing and lenses: two approaches for exploring player-generated game ideas in videos

In a child-centered game design process, game ideas collected from players are a valuable source for designers to inspire the creation of game concepts. A question that often arises is how to deal with large amounts of collected information, or more specifically, game ideas generated by children and offered via video snippets as inspirational source for game ideation. The challenge lies in not only working with the 'obvious' observations in the videos, but also thinking about underlying issues (such as cultural issues) or processing them in a more structured way. In a study with multimedia design and technology students (future game designers), we explored the application of and experiences with two approaches, i.e., memoing and lenses, for handling player-generated game ideas within a 2-hour game idea jam. The findings show that the two proposed approaches hold potential for different scopes of ideation (e.g., broadening or narrowing the scope of ideas).